@Cernel said:
@KurtGodel7 said:
Germany sends four fighters and four dive bombers to attack a Soviet territory. The Soviets defend with 4 fighters. Neither nation can send more because they are both at the cap. (The attacker is limited to four bombers + four escorts; the defender is limited to 4 fighters.)
Step 1: a dogfight between German and Soviet fighters. This lasts two combat rounds. Each side's fighters fire at their dogfight value.
Step 2: Any Soviet fighters which survived the dogfight get to attack the German dive bombers. The Soviet fighters fire at their interception value, the dive bombers fire back at their air defense value. Destroyed units are removed.
In this case, if you want to have all Soviet fighters firing both at the German fighters and (if surviving) at the German bombers and do not want to have different dogfight values for escorts and would-be interceptors, then I would say that the change which I would suggest to this system is having the surviving German fighters firing during step 2 too, meaning that (during step 2) the surviving German fighters fire against the Russian fighters with their dogfight value at the same time as the German bombers fire with their air defence value (meaning that this time any fighter downed by other fighters get to fire at the bombers anyway).
To achieve this, the rule may be that on phase 2 up to as many surviving fighters as the number of enemy bombers fire at bombers with their interception value and the rest of the surviving fighters (if the surviving fighters are more than the enemy bombers, meaning them all if the other side has no bombers) fire at fighters with their dogfight value (or do nothing if there are no more enemy fighters at this point). Alternatively, the rule may be that all surviving fighters fire at bombers if one or more bombers are present and fire at fighters otherwise. I think the best would be having a prompt to decide how many fighters are firing at enemy bombers (the prompt being given only if the enemy has both bombers and fighters at this point).
If both sides have fighters but no bombers, this would be the same as having an additional dogfight round.
(The attacker is limited to four bombers + four escorts; the defender is limited to 4 fighters.)
I really don't like the number limit and don't understand why having it.
I see two ideas in your post.
An idea that would make interception more difficult, by permitting escorting fighters to continue to fight after the dogfight phase has ended.
The belief that there should not be a cap of four aircraft per territory.
Your idea 1) depends on play testing. Suppose for example interception proved too easy. Not enough dive bombing, not enough torpedo bombing, because those bombers were too easy to intercept. If such were the case, your idea 1 could be a solution to the problem, because idea 1) nerfs interception. At this point, however, I don't actually know that interception needs to be nerfed.
The four aircraft per territory cap came about as a result of the following. In my play testing, I noticed that it was rare for air to be contested. Instead, one side would dominate each air theater while the other side would abstain from conflict in that theater. The side with the weaker air force had strong incentives to opt out of air conflict instead of participating against a superior air force.
When dominance of an air theater shifted, it was sudden. Not gradual. The side with the formerly weaker air force would come in with enough air to assert dominance in the theater.
The idea of limiting it to four air per territory was borrowed from Axis and Allies Naval Miniatures. The idea was to allow the side with the weaker air force the option of strong local participation in air conflict. This should generate a meaningful air war even when one side's overall air presence in a theater is significantly stronger than the other's.
